Has anyone had their channel’s Browse impressions sharply restricted following livestream technical issues (or any other trigger), and if so, how long did the restriction last and what did the recovery look like?
Context - I run a daily live sports channel (20k+ subs, & was consistently doing 1.5-2m views/month).
At the end of March, I had 5 streams crash in the space of 9 days due to new equipment failing. I identified the problem quickly and corrected it. Stable since.
On April 10th, Browse impressions per stream dropped suddenly from an average of 173,000 (10 March – 9 April) to 15,000 (10 April – 28 April) — a 91% drop.
Browse CTR is still 12-14%+ on most streams, Browse AVD has gone from c1-minute pre-contraction to 3-5 minutes post-contraction, like ratio improved from 88% to 95%, and named-channel search is healthy (6k monthly searches for my name specifically). All underlying metrics strong.
A stream I did on the 12th March did 1.2m Browse impressions. A similar event on the 27th April did just 11k Browse impressions on the same channel.
YouTube support confirmed no flags, no policy issues, notifications delivering normally — but obviously can’t see into the recommendation system.
Has anyone been through a similar Browse contraction with strong underlying signals?
How long did recovery take, what did the trajectory look like, and is there anything you’d recommend doing or avoiding in the meantime?